Well, now I can only think of being Sherlock Holmes battling bioweapons, and I fear you’ve set me up for disappointment!

Dis u?

I’m not comfortable with companies using any kind of marketing tactics.

Now, I felt like I was fairly gentle in pointing out the absurd nature of that statement. I even readily acknowledged what I assumed to be your intent, i.e. there are absolutely marketing tactics which go beyond the pale. But, as I, and others, have pointed out, you’re the one operating on your own personal definition of marketing here, which is in contradiction to what that concept actually is. Any intro to business class will tell you that marketing is, essentially, ANYTHING an entity does to inform people of its services. It’s an enormous umbrella, which includes tactics both odious and innocuous. It is as readily applicable to the gal who posts on Facebook that she’ll do your hair for $20 as it is Facebook selling that information to a third party so she can be served targeted salon equipment advertisements.

All I’m saying is, if you say “all marketing is bad”, you need to be prepared for people to call you out on the hyperbole of that statement. Therefore, you might consider arguing the point you actually intend to make (which is good and I agree with you about!), instead of leading with a statement which you don’t actually believe.

Calling you Chicken Little was facetious, but meant to be a gentle dig at the hyperbole. Still, I shouldn’t have said it, and I apologize.

Take it easy there, Chicken Little. “I’m uncomfortable with any kind of marketing” is so hyperbolic, it’s almost parody. Putting the name of your business above the door? Thats marketing. Creating a website where customers can find and engage your services? That’s marketing. A minority-owned business proudly owning that status? That’s marketing. A friend telling you about the great meal they had the other day from a local restaurant? Believe it or not, that’s marketing.

Marketing is not evil in and of itself. Unless humanity returns to a tribal social structure where you can count the number of non-related acquaintances you know on your fingers, it is a necessary component of operating a business. Of course, you’re 100% right that there have been dubious applications of the principle, but again, you’re throwing the baby out with the bath water, and it hampers the salient point that you’re trying to make.

Man. I really need to start watching movies from the French New Wave. I knew Alphaville was technically a science fiction story, but I didn’t realize how far I to the genre Godard leaned.

High Hopes by Mike Leigh seems like it at least partially checks that box.

Your final sentence provided me an audible guffaw.

And it’s pretty good! I had fun with the time I put into it, though it did feel a little bloated in the same way their Pathfinder RPG did. I think it’s a consequence of their Kickstarter success for these games, which just kept talking on more stretch goals.

The good news is there is a LOT of game present for those that enjoy it.

Idk about that, I heard a fair number of folks who were less enthused with Eternal vs 2016. The general sentiment among those folks was that Eternal skewed too far into “combat puzzle” territory, where encounters felt like they had prescribed “solutions” that you needed to perform to succeed reliably. This iteration being less about resource management and high speed encounter flow seems to be a reaction to those critiques.

Post your shit, don’t be excessive. If it gets deleted for self promo in one community, there’s several alternatives. If it gets deleted in every community, reassess your messaging lol.

This platform requires OC to survive, or else we’re just a mirror for other sites. Deleting OC because it comes from the Creator seems short-sighted, but I’m also not a mod. So, ymmv.

Okay? Again, who are you serving by choosing this specific forum to shout that messaging? I know you aren’t OP, so consider that the royal “you”.

It’s just tiresome is all, and I’m on the “boo, capitalism” side of things. It’s like the folks who turn every thread tangentially related to Microsoft into a Linux advertisement. Or the involuntary ejaculation of a vegetarian when the subject of diet comes up. Like, yes, these folks are probably correct about the things they are saying; you’re never going to be wrong to consider the angle being worked by a corp. However, it’s infantilizing to suggest that people are unaware that a corporation wants their money. That’s a given, and without additional commentary, it’s a positively useless statement that only serves to make people tune out the messaging, even in contexts where it IS desirable to bring it up (such as when a company is doing shady shit in pursuit of your money). Releasing a mediocre graphical remaster of a title that people have nostalgia for hardly qualifies as “shady shit” in my book. Lazy, sure, but not shady.

Higher fidelity for sure, as one would expect when comparing games released 10 years apart, but idk if it’s “better” per se. Of course this is totally subjective, but I feel like there’s no style to inZoi, unless we define “generic AI output” as a style.

And a hundred thousand tons of crude oil.

I feel like my regular rotation is slight in comparison to what other folks are posting, but podcasts are an unwinding kind of activity for me, so I don’t really want to be inundated with current events or heavy topics. Accordingly, here’s a bunch of “Arts and Culture” type recommendations.

Bandsplain: Yasi Salek explores bands’ discographies, usually with a guest who is a self-described super fan of the band being discussed. I think it’s a Spotify exclusive, which is a bummer, but they leverage that to actually play relevant songs at certain points in the cast. A good way to remove blindspots in your catalog, or to achieve a greater understanding of artists’ holistic output, rather than just the hits.

Blank Check: A podcast about filmographies. Each “season” covers a different director, and the hosts examine their career chronologically. Fun, and it encourages me to finally tackle movie blindspots. They are doing the first half of Spielberg’s career at the moment, most recently discussing 1987’s Empire of the Sun.

Eye of the Duck: A podcast about movie genres / vibes. Each “season” is a different kind of film, and the hosts select emblematic examples to examine in chronological order, with a mind towards how the genre evolved over time. Examples of past topics include Alien Invasion, 80s Dark Fantasy, Space Movies, and so on. They are typically a little more “film school brain” than most amateur podcasts, which I appreciate, but may not be everyone’s cup of tea.

Three Moves Ahead: Weekly video game podcast, with a heavy emphasis on strategy games. I’m not a regular listener, but I will often check to see if they’ve done an episode on a particular game that I’m playing.

Every F’n FF: Three folks (who I think are involved in the speed running scene) on a quest to complete every Final Fantasy game. This coincided with a replay of FFX that I embarked upon. Sadly I think X-2 may have broke them, as they’ve not uploaded since last October, but it does look like they completed 1, 2, 4, 7, 10, 13, and Dirge of Cerberus.

This video series sounds like it might be up your alley. Guy documents his attempts to simulate a goblin society and ecosystem.

He sucks, but it was such a good set-up for a shitty Dice Man style joke, I couldn’t resist.

An emotional box? Enough about my wife!

OH!

Just came from another thread detailing them walking back the skin=class change. Glad to that’s being fixed, as that’s definitely the most egregious issue, but I’m very disappointed to hear the gunplay is less impactful. That was KF2’s biggest strength imo, esp as a Commando main when I played it frequently. Popping domes in slo Mo was art.

This isn’t a direct answer to your question per se, but if this a topic that interests you, I can’t recommend The Right Stuff enough. I’ve not seen the film from the 80s, though by all accounts it’s pretty good, but the book is an excellent overview of the early days of space exploration, when the exact sort of questions that you ask here were being bandied about by the fledgling, pre-Apollo program NASA.

The focus of the book is on the first wave of astronauts who, as someone else mentioned, were pulled primarily from combat aviation backgrounds. I recall several passages which detailed their reactions to the sorts of psychological testing that they were undergoing, usually complete with humorous anecdotes.

4 was something of a departure from the formula, wasn’t it?

HoMM2 was my game from the series. For whatever reason, I never really progressed past that one, even though I had heard 3 was the consensus favorite.